Th e Other Gospels This page intentionally left blank Th e Other Gospels Accounts of Jesus from Outside the New Testament EDITED AND TRANSLATED BY BART D. EHRMAN AND ZLATKO PLEŠE 1 Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offi ces in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Th ailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press in the UK and certain other countries. Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016 © Oxford University Press 2014 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitt ed, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitt ed by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above. You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Th e other Gospels : accounts of Jesus from outside the New Testament / edited and translated by Bart D. Ehrman and Zlatko Pleše. pages cm Concise edition with English text only. Rev. ed. of: Th e Apocryphal Gospels : texts and translations. c2011. ISBN 978-0-19-933521-3 (hardcover : alk. paper)—ISBN 978-0-19-933522-0 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Apocryphal Gospels. 2. Apocryphal books (New Testament). I. Ehrman, Bart D., editor of compilation. II. Plese, Zlatko, editor of compilation. BS2850.A3A66 2013 229c.8052—dc23 2013020110 1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper To our faculty colleagues in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill This page intentionally left blank CONTENTS P r e f a c e xi Table of Technical Terms and Symbols xv I N F A N C Y G O S P E L S 1 . Th e Infancy Gospel of Th omas 3 2 . Th e Infancy Gospel of Th omas C: An Alternative Beginning 15 3 . Th e Proto-Gospel of James (Th e Birth of Mary, the Revelation of James) 18 4 . Th e Gospel of Pseudo-Matt hew 37 5 . Th e Latin Infancy Gospels (J Composition): Arundel Form 58 6. History of Joseph the Carpenter 78 MINISTRY GOSPELS 7. Th e Jewish-Christian Gospels 99 THE GOSPEL OF THE NAZAREANS 103 THE GOSPEL OF THE EBIONITES 108 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO THE HEBREWS 112 8 . Th e Gospel according to the Egyptians 115 9. A Gospel Harmony: Th e Diatessaron? 120 10. Papyrus Berlin 11710 123 viii Contents 11 . P a p y r u s C a i r o 1 0 7 3 5 125 12. Papyrus Egerton 2 (and Papyrus Köln 255) 127 13 . P a p y r u s M e r t o n 51 132 14. Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 210 134 15. Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 840 136 1 6 . P a p y r u s O x y r h y n c h u s 1 2 2 4 140 17. P a p y r u s O x y r h y n c h u s 2 9 4 9 143 18 . P a p y r u s O x y r h y n c h u s 4 0 0 9 146 19. Papyrus Vindobenensis G 2325 (Th e Fayûm Fragment) 149 SAYINGS GOSPELS AND AGRAPHA 2 0 . Th e Gospel according to Th omas 155 THE GOSPEL OF THOMAS: THE GREEK FRA GMENTS 174 21 . A g r a p h a 180 PASSION, RESURRECTION, AND POST-RESURRECTION GOSPELS 2 2 . Th e Gospel of Peter 191 2 3 . Th e Gospel of Judas 201 24. Jesus’ Correspondence with Abgar 214 2 5 . Th e Gospel of the Savior 217 2 6 . Th e Discourse upon the Cross 226 2 7. Th e Gospel of Nicodemus (Th e Acts of Pilate) A 231 2 8 . Th e Gospel of Nicodemus (Acts of Pilate) B (Including the Descent into Hades) 254 2 9 . Th e Report of Pontius Pilate (Anaphora Pilati) 267 3 0 . Th e Handing Over of Pilate (Paradosis Pilati) 272 31 . Th e Lett er of Pilate to Claudius 276 3 2 . Th e Lett er of Herod to Pilate 279 Contents ix 3 3 . Th e Lett er of Pilate to Herod 282 3 4 . Th e Lett er of Tiberius to Pilate 285 3 5 . Th e Vengeance of the Savior (Vindicta Salvatoris) 289 3 6 . Th e Death of Pilate Who Condemned Jesus (Mors Pilati) 300 3 7. Th e Narrative of Joseph of Arimathea 305 3 8 . Th e Gospel according to Mary 313 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO MARY: GREEK FRA GMENTS 320 3 9 . Th e Greater Questions of Mary 322 This page intentionally left blank PREFACE Two years ago we published a four-language edition of the various Gospels that did not make it into the New Testament, Th e Apocryphal Gospels: Texts and Translations . It included all of the early accounts of Jesus’ words and deeds found in Greek, Latin, and Coptic; for each of these texts we provided a new English translation, with the original language on the left -side page and the English translation on the right. Our goal was to make these valuable works available to scholars, graduate students, and even advanced undergraduates who had facility with one or another of these ancient languages. Altogether the collection con- tained some forty diff erent documents—Gospels down to the Middle Ages, and several important ones from later times, as they could be found in our three target languages. Sometimes these books are called the “apocryphal” Gospels. Th e term is not altogether apt, as “apocrypha” means “hidden things,” and these books are not especially hidden, although some of them are indeed hard to fi nd, either in the original languages or in English translation. But the term apocrypha eventually came to refer to the books that did not come to be included in the canon of Scripture, and it is in that sense that they are best applied to these other Gospels. In any event, Oxford University Press published our book in 2011. It then occurred to us that by creating a new edition with just the English translations of these valuable, noncanonical texts we could perform a service to the reading public at large, which, alas, is not, as a rule, trained to read the ancient languages. Th is would be an edition for lay readers who want to know what the Gospels from outside the New Testament have to say. And that’s what the cur- rent book is—a translation of the Gospels down to the Middle Ages (and some from beyond that time) from outside the New Testament, which survive either in their entirety or only in fragments. Our defi nition of “Gospel” is reasonably broad: by it we mean a book that records the words, deeds, and experiences of the earthly Jesus (or of others, such as Pontius Pilate, who are important only xi xii Preface because of their connection to him). We do not include books that are con- cerned only with revelations that Jesus allegedly delivered aft er his resurrection (for example, the Apocryphon of John) or those that happen to be entitled “Gospels” but are not, in some way, about Jesus’ earthly life (e.g., the Gospel of Truth). In this English-only version of our book we have included a couple of additional texts not found in the four-language edition: a new translation of the Gospel of the Savior, and of the Discourse Upon the Cross (sometimes called the “Stauros” [= Cross] Gospel) that is closely aligned with it, and of new frag- ments that have turned up of the Gospel of Judas. Some of the Gospels we include here are relatively well known to students of the Apocrypha: the Gospel of Th omas, the Gospel of Peter, and the Gospel of Mary, for example. But others are very diffi cult to fi nd in English translations, such as the Gospel of Nicodemus, the Story of Joseph the Carpenter, and the Death of Pilate. Our collection includes Gospels that survive from antiquity in a complete form, with beginning, middle, and end (e.g., the Proto-Gospel of James and the Gospel of Nicodemus), those available only in fragments (e.g., the Gospel of Peter; Papyrus Egerton 2), and those known not from surviving man- uscripts but by quotations in the writings of the church Fathers (e.g., the Gospel of the Egyptians; the Greater Questions of Mary). We should point out that similar collections of noncanonical texts do exist, but none exactly like the one we present here. Some of these others are intended only for scholars and are not widely used by those without scholarly aspirations, such as the two-volume New Testament Apocrypha by W. Schneemelcher or the one-volume Apocryphal New Testament by J.